In recent years, presentation systems have prevailed in companies, government offices, and autonomous communities. The following items (1) to (3) are the main factors of such prevalence.
(1) Recently, network environments and processing performance of computers have greatly improved, and information with a large data size can be exchanged and processed in real time. For this reason, it is possible to make large-capacity data communications free from any delay, which are important in the presentation system.
(2) In recent years, in companies, government offices, and autonomous communities, globalization is in progress, and a situation called a distributed service in which working partners who have business relations work at sites distributed nationwide and worldwide is increasing. Under such a situation, when working partners get together to attend a conference, a huge amount of labor is required. Hence, when the presentation system is innovated, such labor can be avoided, and working partners can attend the conference without physically moving to the site of the conference.
(3) Companies, government offices, and autonomous communities have struggled to reduce costs required for conferences as much as possible. If the presentation system is used, participants of the conference need not get together to one place, thus reducing money and time required for the participants to get together in one place.
When the presentation system is used, the participants of the conference can share display of documents, images, and Web pages at remote places, can synchronize the display screens, and can annotate documents.
Many of presentation systems are combined with video conferencing systems and Web conferencing systems. As a result, the presentation system becomes more convenient and has multiple functions. For example, participants of a conference can utilize the video conferencing systems or Web conferencing systems, and can confirm each other's faces or can make text chatting.
As an example of the presentation system, “WebEx Meeting Center” available from WebEx Communications, Inc. or the like is known. This “WebEx Meeting Center” is characterized in that it can be used anywhere in environments that allow Internet connections, and has many functions. For example, in the “WebEx Meeting Center”, confirmation of lists of presentations and participants, or text chatting and voting can be made on a single window. The “WebEx Meeting Center” allows the user to make most of all operations on a single window, thus assuring high operability. The user can simultaneously confirm operations of a plurality of functions.
Also, as another presentation system, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-78074 is available.
However, the aforementioned conventional presentation systems suffer the following problems.
The presentation system requires a large window size. The presentation system has multiple functions as its sales point, and uses many GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) as its feature. Most of presentation systems implement all GUIs using a single window in consideration of operability. Since the window size becomes inevitably large, the presentation system and another application cannot be displayed at the same time. When any other application is to be used, the large window of the presentation system is obstructive.
In order to solve such problem, the window may be hidden by selecting a “close” or “minimize” button of the window. However, in such case, another problem is posed.
That is, when the window is hidden, the user cannot recognize the situation of presentations. For example, when another participant shares new presentation data, adds annotation data, or switches synchronous display to another presentation data, the user cannot recognize such situation change if the window is hidden.
In this way, in the conventional presentation system, when the window is hidden from the user, even when the situation of presentations has changed, the window remains hidden from user's eye. Therefore, the user cannot recognize any changes in the presentations.
The present invention has been made in consideration of such problems, and has as its first object to allow the user to recognize a change in display on a window of a terminal apparatus even when that window is hidden.
It is the second object of the present invention to allow the user to recognize a specific change in displayed contents on the window even when window is hidden on the terminal apparatus.
It is the third object of the present invention to allow the user to recognize a change in displayed contents on a window without disturbing input to another application when the window is hidden on the terminal apparatus.